Shelley and His Circle, 1773-1822

The magnificent collection of “Shelley and His Circle” manuscripts in the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library is one of our finest sources for the English Romantic movement. This edition presents the more than 450 manuscripts from 1772 to 1822, over half of them by Percy Bysshe Shelley.Volumes I and II include a first accurate printing of Shelley’s letters to Thomas Hogg during a crucial period of his life; another series of letters records a struggle between Forman and Silsbee for acquisition of Shelley’s papers that was the background for Henry James’s Aspern Papers; Thomas Love Peacock, William Godwin, Leigh Hunt, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others are represented by materials (most of them previously unpublished) that throw much new light on their lives and times.The Peacock and part of the Wollstonecraft manuscripts were edited by Eleanor L. Nicholes, and The Diary of Harriet Grove (Shelley’s boyhood sweetheart) by Frederick L. Jones. New and effective editorial, bibliographical and typographical methods were devised to deal with special problems.

[The editors] have rescued the material from felonious footnotery primarily by enclosing it in a continuous narrative that contains detailed introductions to each of the characters of the circle, and a general background of their relationships and of the times. Urbanely written and seemingly omniscient within its area, this narrative is…lively and informative.